United Arab Emirates: Emirates Global Aluminium, the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside oil and gas, today announced that it recycled over 96 thousand tonnes of waste in 2017, up from over 77 thousand tonnes in 2016.

Today is the first Global Recycling Day, which is being marked worldwide to encourage the economic re-use of waste.

The volume waste EGA recycled in 2017 increased as the company reduced stockpiles from previous years having found economically-viable solutions.

Salman Abdulla, EGA’s Executive Vice President of Health, Safety, Security, Environment, Quality and Business Transformation, said: “At EGA our long term aspiration is that everything we produce can ultimately be a product with an economic use. We just have to work with other industries to find those uses. Economists call this system, where one industry’s by-products become another industry’s feedstock, the ‘circular economy’. This is clearly the right thing to do for business and the planet.”

EGA’s smelting operations in Abu Dhabi and Dubai produce several by-product streams for which the company has made significant progress in finding economic re-uses, particularly with the cement industry.

Spent pot lining, the used inner lining of the pots in which aluminium is smelted, is a useful source of fuel and refractory materials for the cement industry. EGA supplied almost twice as much SPL to UAE cement plants in 2017 than it produced.

Carbon dust is produced during the manufacture of carbon anodes, large carbon blocks which are suspended in each pot and are consumed during the smelting process. Carbon dust can be used as an alternative fuel in the cement industry. EGA recycled most of the carbon dust from its Jebel Ali smelter in 2017 and is seeking similar solutions for carbon dust from its Al Taweelah smelter.

EGA is currently building an alumina refinery at Al Taweelah, which will be the first in the UAE and only the second in the Middle East. A by-product of alumina refining is bauxite residue.

Although academic research has been conducted for decades on potential uses, most bauxite residue produced worldwide is still stored indefinitely as waste. Industry experts estimate that at least 150 million tonnes of bauxite residue are produced worldwide each year. It is thought that less than two percent of this is currently put to productive use.

EGA is currently working on research projects on the potential re-use of bauxite residue. These include a project with The University of Queensland’s School of Agriculture and Food Sciences to investigate combining bauxite residue with agricultural and domestic wastes to create a soil for greening and other uses in the UAE, and work the European research and technology organisation VITO to assess the viability of using bauxite residue, an industrial by-product, in large volume construction materials.

While new productive uses are being developed, EGA will operate a dedicated bauxite residue storage site in line with current world-class best practice, about 30 kilometres inland from the coast in Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi.

About EGA

Emirates Global Aluminium is equally-owned by Mubadala Investment Company of Abu Dhabi and the Investment Corporation of Dubai.

It is the largest industrial company in the United Arab Emirates outside the oil and gas industry, and the largest company jointly owned by the two Emirates.

EGA’s aluminium is the second largest made-in-the UAE export after oil and gas. In 2017, EGA produced 2.6 million tonnes of cast metal. EGA is the only UAE producer and makes the UAE the fifth largest aluminium producing nation in the world.

EGA has more than 350 customers in over 60 countries. About 80 per cent of EGA’s production is value added products, one of the highest proportions of any aluminium company in the world.

EGA’s aluminium is primarily used in the construction, automotive, packaging, aerospace and electronics industries.

Over 10 per cent of EGA’s production is sold in the UAE to around 26 downstream aluminium companies that make products with EGA’s aluminium. The growing broader aluminium sector in the UAE already employs around 30,000 people, making it the largest employer amongst the UAE’s energy intensive industries.

EGA itself employs around 7,000 of these people including almost 1,200 UAE Nationals.

EGA has focused on technology development for over 25 years. EGA has used its own technology for every smelter expansion since the 1990s and has retrofitted all its older production lines. In 2016 EGA became the first UAE industrial company to licence its core industrial process technology internationally.

As a corporate citizen of the UAE, Emirates Global Aluminium aspires in all its operations to be measured amongst the world’s leading metals and mining companies in meeting its environmental and social responsibilities.

In 2017, EGA became the first Middle East headquartered company to join the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative, a global programme to foster greater sustainability and transparency in the aluminium industry.

EGA was formed in 2014 through the merger of Dubai Aluminium and Emirates Aluminium.

DUBAL’s Jebel Ali aluminium smelter began production in 1979. At almost five square kilometres, EGA’s Jebel Ali site is five times bigger than Dubai Mall.

EMAL started production in 2009 and its Al Taweelah aluminium smelter was the largest single-site aluminium smelter in the world when completed. EGA’s Al Taweelah site is five times bigger than Al Maryah Island at six square kilometres.

EGA has its own power stations at both sites, producing electricity to meet its needs. EGA’s electricity generation capacity is 5,450 megawatts, making EGA the third largest electricity generator in the UAE after the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority and the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority.

EGA also produces water through desalination units at its power plants. In addition to meeting its own water requirements, EGA supplies 1.5 per cent of the water needs of Dubai as well as commercial water customers and bottlers.

Today EGA is expanding upstream and internationally to secure the natural resources the UAE’s aluminium industry needs and create new revenue streams.

EGA’s wholly-owned subsidiary Guinea Alumina Corporation is building a bauxite mine and associated export infrastructure in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, in one of the largest greenfield investments in that country in over 40 years.

In the UAE, EGA is building the country’s first alumina refinery at Al Taweelah. The project will reduce the UAE’s dependence on imported alumina and supply 75 per cent of the Al Taweelah smelter’s needs.

For more information on EGA please visit www.ega.ae.  

© Press Release 2018